


Beauty In The Breakdown

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Firefly, Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-27
Updated: 2010-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:17:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most people think of Blue Sun as a research and development company, a place where new tech is tested for the good of the Alliance worlds. It was around for much longer than people realized, and not all of their research was intended to benefit the masses. Mal finds something in their storerooms while looking for archival data that changes things for the crew of <i>Serenity.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Leave Your Things Behind

**Author's Note:**

> For the inception_kink prompt in round 6: [After being captured by the infant organization known simply as Blue Sun for their technology and knowledge, Arthur, Ariadne, and Eames awaken from stasis hundreds of years in the future in the cargo hold of Serenity.](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/9327.html?thread=16753775#t16753775)
> 
> Title and chapter titles are from Frou Frou's "Let Go."

"Well, well, well. What have we got here?"

The guard kept his jaw clenched tight, but Mal Reynolds held a gun against his temple and nudged it none too gently. "I don't have the key," the guard spat.

"Oh, I don't rightly believe that _go se,"_ Mal replied amiably. "That's a part of the storeroom that's guarded quite closely. I'm sure there's something very valuable in there, and it would be mighty interesting to see." He gave the guard a smile that wasn't heartwarming in the slightest. "Or I could let my compatriot blow the whole thing wide open and we'll see what's left of the room. It's less messy this way, _dong ma?"_

Stiffly, the guard accessed the panel and the doors slid open. "There."

Mal gave him a mocking bow, and indicated that he should go in first. "After you."

The guard entered the storeroom, flipping on the lights. There were three rectangular metallic boxes that were connected to a single power cell, and there was nothing else in the room. For this level of security, to be buried at the very back of a complicated system of storerooms, whatever was in those boxes had to be important. Considering that this particular group of storage facilities were owned by Blue Sun, Mal had no intention of leaving it behind. They were the financial backers of the Academy and the Alliance government. Following the revelation about the Alliance's actions on Miranda, there were multiple skirmishes on border worlds and even Londinium had its share of anti-Alliance battles. The Independents were likely ready to band together, though Mal wasn't sure where he would fall if a full on civil war broke out.

Either way, he didn't hold with the Alliance's level of interference. By extension, he didn't hold with Blue Sun's experiments either.

The guard helped Jayne load up the three boxes on the skid. They were bulky and heavy, and Jayne complained about it. The power cell was accidentally disconnected, and the guard seemed nervous about it. "You can't let them power down!" he blurted, rushing forward to try to reconnect the boxes. "They have to stay connected! It's by order of the president!"

Jayne palmed the power cell. "This don't even hold much in it. Can't be that big a thing in there," he said, peering at the three boxes. None were marked, and there was no indication of how to open them.

Mal held the guard at gunpoint. "You might want to be explaining that comment."

"This is part of the CEO's personal collection," the guard said, looking for all the world as if he wished he hadn't spoken. "They're not to be disturbed."

"Well, I'm disturbing 'em," Mal declared. He pistolwhipped the guard and watched dispassionately as he fell to the ground unconscious. "Jayne, start up the skid. We probably will be noticed soon. Zoe's good, but she's not that good."

Jayne shoved the power cell into his pocket and started up the skid. It was weighted down heavily by the three bulky boxes, but even with their weight, his and Mal's, it was able to maneuver through the storage facility toward the exit. Zoe was keeping the front office hostage while some of Badger's men were raiding another building. This particular one had been cleared out of all items except for these three boxes in a locked back room. Mal could only hope that it wasn't something that would explode once they opened the boxes up in Serenity's cargo hold. Jayne could only hope it was state of the art weaponry.

River's eyes were large and round as saucers when she saw the boxes being pulled into the hold. She backed up and away from them, shaking her head. "They shouldn't exist," she said desperately. Mal was ignoring her, so she went to Jayne. "Please, it's improbable for preservation to have taken hold after so long. There's likely to be damage, you can't hurt them, Jayne, please."

He frowned at her and carefully pulled her fingers off of his arm. "I got no idea what you're talking 'bout, crazy girl. I thought you was sane?"

"That has an unstable containment field!" River screeched, pushing at his chest. "You don't know what will happen! You could kill them! You can't let them die!"

"Doc!" Jayne bellowed, holding River at arm's length. Just when he thought she was sane... "Git yer _feng le_ sister offa me!"

As Simon entered the cargo bay, there was a hissing sound from one of the containers. As the others looked on in shock, the containers seemed to break apart. Supercooled air seeped out and rolled into low clouds of steam. River made a low whimpering sound and looked up at Jayne beseechingly. "It's been too long. What if they're damaged like I was?"

Jayne's mouth snapped shut and he awkwardly patted her shoulder. "Look. The doc's good at what he does. It'll be all right."

It didn't occur to Jayne until much later that River had known there was a _they_ to be concerned about. At first, Mal was concerned with a silver briefcase and a box full of vials. As the rolling smoke cleared a bit more, he backed up with a cry of surprise. _"Wo de ma!"_ He looked around frantically for Simon. "Doc! Git over here and do some doctoring!"

Each box held a silver briefcase and a box full of vials. Neither were marked, and were tucked into a corner of the large box. The rest of the box was taken up by the curled and naked form of a human being in stasis. As soon as Simon realized this, he immediately ordered Jayne and Mal to help him get the three people into the infirmary. There were two men and a woman, eyes closed and skin freezing from the cryostasis chemicals. It wasn't a combination that Simon was familiar with, though he had only paid attention to the compounds that would have been in River's containment unit. He hadn't much cared for cryostasis mechanics, as there had been so much else to memorize in MedAcad and during his surgical residency.

"Where's the readout display?" Simon barked, sliding easily into his role of surgeon. Mal and Jayne looked at him blankly. River was swaying on her feet near the boxes, her face drawn and pale, her hands clenched tightly together at her chest. _"Mei mei,_ this probably brings back bad memories..."

"I don't hear them, Simon. They're silent. There aren't any voices. There are supposed to be voices." She was starting to get agitated, and Simon was tempted to find a smoother to inject in her arm to help her calm down. He had thought she was better after the Miranda incident. Perhaps it was only a temporary fix?

River's eyes cleared and stared at him with perfect clarity. "There is more to life than sanity, Simon. You would do well to remember that fact."

Simon looked away when her eyes seemed to shift again, and he looked through the three stasis chambers. "What model is this?"

Zoe had been looking through all three boxes, and Kaylee had come running at the commotion. "I don't see nothing looking like a standard stasis chamber." She shook her head and looked at Simon. "Whatever Blue Sun had planned for those three, they didn't want anyone knowing about it."

Simon muttered under his breath and jogged back to the infirmary. The three frozen bodies took up every available surface in the tiny infirmary, but he wanted to be near the equipment. He was flying blind, then, not knowing what their baseline core temperature would have been. Sensors tracked their core temperatures, which was rising at a steady linear rate. He starting running lines of fluids, particularly the lactated ringer's solution. He had no idea what their basal metabolism would have been, and he could easily over correct glucose levels after the fact; it would be harder for him to reverse brain damage from starved cells as the bodies began to thaw. Quick and dirty scans revealed no obvious tissue damage, no broken bones, no thermal damage. When the temperature started climbing at an exponential rate, Simon swore a blue streak that even gave Mal pause. He barked out orders for cooling blankets to cover all three of the bodies to slow the rate of the thaw. If it was too rapid, ice crystals within the cells would shear them apart, and the three people would die right there.

River stood outside of the infirmary, fingers pressed against the glass. Kaylee tried to distract her, tried to remind her that the ship needed to have its pilot. But River had already set the coordinates, and _Serenity_ was more than capable of flying to Whitehall on its own. The taller of the two men had more finely chiseled features and black hair. He had a lean build, and River recognized calluses on his hands from writing and firing weapons. The other man had a more muscular build, lighter hair and a fine stubble across his cheeks. The calluses on his thick fingers were more pronounced, and River could almost catch a flash of an insouciant grin toward the others. The woman was petite, slender and built along lithe lines. She was the sort that the Alliance had liked to recruit into the Academy; girls like that tended to be from wealthy families, much like River had been, and had all sorts of connections that could be used. Plus, they tended to be overlooked in crowds, and no one thought they could be assassins. There was still the default stance that men were the violent ones, and that women weren't always as capable. Mal obviously didn't hold to such antiquated notions.

She was startled by the sight of impossible buildings and paradoxes and the lilt of music in a language long dead. River closed her eyes and tried to follow the flashes. They were faint, little more than faint impressions from their minds. They didn't have linear coherent thoughts yet, but there was _something_ there, hidden deep down in hidden layers in their minds. It was like following a thread through a maze, hoping she didn't lose track of it in the dark. It was like floating in the black, only a slim tether keeping her tied to _Serenity._ River could feel Kaylee beside her, knew that she was saying something comforting and supportive, as Kaylee often did.

 _Hold on,_ she told them, opening her eyes. _My brother will do all he can, and he might just be able to save you._

***

River was dreaming of paradoxes, gunfire and an impossible spire on the head of a pin. It was like before, outside the infirmary, only much clearer and more coherent. The woman, a thread, was weaving through the darkness of a maze and would lead the others after her. They had seen the monster, had been cornered by it. They had been in over their heads, and the monster had been more than a minotaur, more than an army within a mind. She woke and tucked one of her dresses under her arm. The woman would need a dress. It was red with yellow flowers on it, something that reminded River of life and color and something more than empty darkness and mazes. She could ask Jayne nicely for clothing, and it might fit the shorter of the two men. Her brother had nice things, and it might fit the taller of the two. It would be nice of Jayne or Simon to share, but their thoughts were on practical matters like medicine or security or figuring out who they might be.

Silly men. They would answer nicely enough if asked.

She saw the briefcases and boxes piled neatly outside of the infirmary. There had simply been no room for them inside the infirmary, though Simon and Mal both wanted to have their contents analyzed. It was a game, however. The briefcases were locked with combinations, and the others would get upset and just smash them open. With a sigh, River spun the dials and opened the correct case to reveal the device inside. Her fingertips ghosted over the top of it, knowing suddenly just how to use it. The other two were full of files and other nonsense, an elaborate kind of three card monty bid. She shut the case and spun the dials back to zero.

Dreams shouldn't be this real.

She looked up as footsteps approached. "What you doin' there, moonbrain? Mal won't want you touching them things," Jayne said, frowning. He had a cup of coffee in hand, and he eyed the infirmary. "I'm surprised the doc's not in there yet."

"There were things he had to attend to," River said with a shrug. "The temperatures are rising at an acceptable rate to his tastes."

Jayne eyed her warily. "Can you Read 'em?" he asked after a moment. It seemed to be an acceptable risk to ask. "You know, while they're not really alive yet and all?"

River let her gaze fall to the floor and her breath left her lungs in a rush. "There are images now. They were empty shells before." She slammed her flat palm against one of the silver briefcases. "No one listens to me! It was sheer serendipity that they haven't fallen to pieces when the containment shields were dropped! I _said_ that they shouldn't have been opened!" She looked up and leveled a finger at Jayne's stunned face. "You thought I wasn't sane!"

"You started talkin' funny again! What was I supposed to think? You're fine for months and then you just lost it!"

She pressed her lips together angrily. "Perhaps I was wrong to think you understood what I was trying to communicate," River said. She moved past him, blinking back the tears that threatened to rise. Stupid of her, getting her feelings all tangled up. She should have just squelched them when still nascent, and maybe this would hurt less now.

Jayne caught her arm with a sigh. "C'mon, moony. Stop it. I'm sorry, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear?"

River turned to look at him, and he was visibly surprised by her watery gaze. "No." She shook off his hand and ran back to her bunk.

With a sigh, Jayne finished his coffee and looked over the three cases. River had left the red and yellow dress behind, and it was obvious who it was for. Jayne almost winced at the sight of it. River had been in a similar situation just over a year ago. Dammit, it was easier when he was a heartless bastard.

He was startled by the sound of a low beep inside the infirmary. Sensor pads were picking up something, and it looked to be the one on the woman. He vaguely remembered some of the medical mumbo jumbo he had to memorize for that job on Ariel, and he peeked at the various sensors and stimulators. He nearly dropped his coffee cup when he realized that the cardiac monitor had picked up a heartbeat. She was definitely alive now, and she was definitely going to be waking up. He triggered the cortical stimulator on the woman and checked on the other two as Simon came into the infirmary. He looked up into Simon's startled face. "She's alive," he said unnecessarily, feeling like he had been caught doing something naughty. Stupid Tams. This conscience thing was such _go se._

Simon immediately snapped into doctor mode. "Check those other monitors," he said in clipped tones, pointing at the two men. He snatched up a stethoscope to listen to the woman's irregular heartbeat for himself; sensors were always good up to a point, but they always had to be checked out. Her skin was still ashen pale, though it had more color to it than before. Simon checked the infusions and started rifling through his different medications. He started working swiftly, gradually getting her heart rate up and steady, and the cortical stimulators soon were able to pick up steady delta waves. There were occasional K spindles, and Simon frowned slightly. "She's sleeping."

"Isn't that how it is when they're frozen?" Jayne asked. "Your sister-"

"No,"Simon corrected, voice sharp. "River was awake when the process began and she was awake when the stasis chamber opened. She was put under while asleep," Simon said, pointing at the woman just coming out of cryostasis. "Considering the state she had been in, it's probably easier for her this way." Simon moved toward the other two, and the shorter of the two men was starting to have an erratic heartbeat as well. "Might as well go tell Mal that I should have them up and around soon enough."

Soon enough turned out be another day and a half.

The screaming began while the crew was eating dinner. River had gotten agitated perhaps twenty minutes beforehand, but had obviously tried to calm herself down. Simon had made a comment about how far she had progressed; only Jayne seemed to see her flinch in response to the comment. She flew from the mess as soon as the screaming started, and by the time the others were down by the infirmary River had managed to unlock the doors. The woman had been screaming, and her hands looked bruised. She was holding a scalpel in front of her as she clutched a sheet to her with her other hand, warding off River and trying to keep herself between River and the two men. "You stay the fuck away from me!" the woman spat, teeth bared. "I won't say anything, no matter what you do!"

River had her hands up in front of her in a placating gesture. "The Hands of Blue are gone," she said slowly. "Dismantled. This place is safe. No Hands of Blue come here."

The woman looked around, eyes wild. She took in her surroundings, the medical equipment and the startled faces behind River. "Where are we?"

"This is not Blue Sun," River said, voice soft. "They were larger than anyone knew, than anyone could plan for. The world you remember is gone, Ariadne."

Ariadne focused her gaze on River, holding the scalpel as if she would throw it at River. "What are you saying? Who are you?"

"I am River. They had seized me, too." River cocked her head to the side. "Though not so long ago. They kept you sedated and under cryostasis. I don't understand why they didn't eliminate you, as they would so many others."

Ariadne looked around the room, clearly agitated. "Where am I? What happened to me?"

Simon took in the pause and strode into the room. "River, whatever you're trying to do isn't helping. _Mei mei,_ go stay with Kaylee..."

"I brought you a dress," River said, ignoring Simon with a roll of her eyes. "My brother is a boob. He forgets these things." She gave him a mock glare. "She is _cold,_ Simon. Let her dress."

Simon caught Ariadne's shivers and frowned. "River, I can handle this..."

Almost hysterical laughter bubbled up from Ariadne's lips. "I'm dreaming. I have to be dreaming." She looked around the room. "Where are my things? Where did they go?"

"All there was with you were briefcases and vials," Simon said, slowly creeping closer. He snatched the scalpel from Ariadne's stunned fingers. He took a look at Ariadne's pale face and for a moment could only see River's when she had been at the Academy. "Is Ariadne your name?" he asked in a softer tone. She nodded, blinking at him. "How about this? You get dressed. I'll be back in five minutes and I'll do a complete physical to be sure there's no damage after the stasis. The protocols are all wrong, and I'd rather be sure there's no damage afterward."

Ariadne looked around the room. "Why aren't they awake?" she asked softly, indicating the two men.

"Larger body mass," Simon told her. "It takes longer to reverse the stasis, but they should wake up. You did."

Her fingers moved spastically over the sheet she clutched to her chest. "No, I don't think I did."

Her name was Ariadne. The two men were Arthur and Eames, and she refused to leave their sides. She hovered over them, protective, nearly snarling when anyone suggested that she leave them under Simon's care. Zoe kept watch just outside the infirmary, armed to the nines, watching as she carefully pressed her lips to their foreheads. "Wake up," she told each of them. "You have to wake up and come back to me."

The taller one had a slighter frame and wound up waking first. His brown eyes snapped open and his breath whistled out through his teeth. He nearly fell off of the table he had been propped up on, and Ariadne helped to catch him. "Arthur," she whispered against his ear. "I'm here."

He blinked and visibly shook as he looked around. "We went down another layer?" He turned and saw Eames lying on another counter top, chest moving with only the most shallow of breaths. "Did we go to limbo?" he asked her. Ariadne shook her head. "Then what happened?"

"We got frozen," Ariadne told him. She grasped his hand in hers. "The bastards _froze_ us."

Arthur started ripping all of the sensors and stimulators that he could find, pushing Simon aside when the doctor protested. His knees buckled when he tried to stand, and he collapsed to the ground, coughing. He pulled the lines the rest of the way out of his arm and leaned against Ariadne as he struggled to get his breathing under control. "That doesn't make sense. They don't have that kind of tech. It's not even viable yet. I would've known if they had that. I wouldn't have let us go in that far if they could do that..."

Ariadne wrapped her arms around his shoulders. "I know," she told him, her lips pressed against his temple. "But something went wrong..."

He pulled himself up and saw Simon eying him warily. Just behind him was Zoe standing at attention, her hand on the butt of her gun. "We could be in another level. As far as projections go, this is over the top." Arthur pulled himself along the counter until he could feel for Eames' pulse. "Why isn't he waking up? If we went in at the same time, he should be waking up here. He wouldn't have stayed behind..."

"This isn't another layer," Ariadne said, catching hold of Arthur's arm. She ran her other hand along his spine. "Arthur, I think this is really happening."

He shook his head, fingers still pressed against Eames' faint pulse. "No. This has to be another layer..."

"Then shift something!" Ariadne hissed, exasperated. "I can't change a damn thing here. Nothing falls apart. There are no mazes. This is _real."_

Arthur turned to look at Ariadne, pain in his eyes. "And the others?"

"They only found us."

He closed his eyes and leaned into Ariadne, letting out a deep sigh. "I'm sorry, Ariadne," he murmured. She wrapped her arms around him as he started shaking his head. "This is all my fault."

"You couldn't have known..."

"I should have."

Eames began coughing, and Simon pushed his way through to begin examining him. Before long he was sitting up and looking around in confusion. "What the bloody hell?"

"Welcome to the future," Arthur said in flat tones.

Eames looked around the infirmary, taking in the loose red dress on Ariadne and the sheets draping his lap and Arthur's waist. He saw Simon, and standing beyond the infirmary was Zoe watching with a shrewd eye. "The future sucks."

***

The three huddled in one of the passenger bunks once Simon allowed them out of the Infirmary. They had begged off talking for the moment, and Mal hadn't pushed it at the time. He did ask River to keep an eye on them, just in case they were more than they seemed. Ariadne sat in Eames' lap, one arm around him. The other was around Arthur, curled up against her chest. Jayne had seen them like that and immediately retreated to his bunk.

River quietly shut the door. "You need time to adjust," she had murmured softly. "It isn't easy being alone and blank to suddenly returning to the midst of vivid existence. Validate it. We can discuss the future later."

Eames broke the silence first. "Did the girl just give us permission to fuck?"

Arthur snorted. "Now I know this isn't a dream. My projection of you tends to be a little more refined."

He merely grinned and nuzzled Ariadne's neck. "You sure you're okay, Ari?"

"The others are gone. I hope they're okay."

"We're in the future. Whatever happened, they're not here now." Arthur lifted his head and shifted his position so he could nuzzle her neck on the other side. "How much do you think they got out of us?"

"They froze us, darling," Eames replied snidely. "Does it fucking matter?"

"Stop it," Ariadne ordered in a stern voice. "We weren't good enough to go up against Blue Sun, that's all. They were supposed to be a startup, but they clearly weren't. We fell right into the trap." She ran her fingers through their hair gently. "At least we're still together."

Arthur trailed kisses along her pulse. "Leave it to you to find the one good thing about all this."

Eames slid his hand down along Ariadne's torso. "Can we trust these people?"

"Do we have a choice?" Arthur asked, eyebrow arched.

"I trust River," Ariadne said in a small voice. "She knows about them. About Blue Sun, I mean. She knows what happened to us, because she said it was done to her, too. She'd been frozen, too. Maybe she can help us get revenge."

Eames gave a soft sigh as he moved to kiss the back of Ariadne's neck as he kneaded a breast through the dress. "I've been such a horrid influence on you. You really do sound like me."

"Live with someone long enough," Ariadne gasped as Arthur slid a hand up her thigh and beneath the skirt of the dress.

It was short work to get out of their borrowed clothes. Arthur pushed open Ariadne's thighs and knelt between them to kiss and lick at her. Eames sat behind her on the bed, helping to keep her upright. Ariadne looped one arm behind her to thread her fingers through his hair, gasping from the combination of Eames' hands on her breasts, his lips on her neck and Arthur's lips between her legs. After she came the first time, Arthur nodded at Eames and gestured with his head to lay her down on the bed. Eames then switched positions to kneel between her legs, and Arthur knelt beside her. Ariadne wrapped her hand around his half erect cock and began to stroke as Eames began to work his fingers inside of her. The two men began to kiss, Eames licking the taste of Ariadne out of Arthur's mouth. Ariadne gasped and moaned at the sight and stretched her legs wide. "Now," she pleaded. "Both at the same time."

"You're not prepped, love," Eames said, pulling away from Arthur. He demonstrated by trying to slide one of his thick fingers inside her ass, and she winced at the intrusion. "So we'll just have to torture you a bit more," he told her with a wicked grin.

As Eames worked her open with his fingers inside her and tongue on her clit, Arthur bent down to kiss her, tongue sliding into her mouth to touch hers. He fondled her breasts gently, then harder as she moaned. Her legs moved restlessly and her hands clutched tightly at Arthur's shoulders. She came hard around Eames' fingers, flowing like honey across them. "Hurry," Arthur said in a thick voice. "God, I want inside you so much," he groaned before seizing Ariadne's mouth in a searing kiss.

When Eames decided she was ready enough, the three rearranged themselves so that Ariadne was wedged between them. Eames was lying on the bed on his back, and he slid inside of Ariadne with some resistance. Arthur held her steady as he slid into her slick heat, and the three of them slowly began to move. Ariadne had her arms slung around Arthur's shoulders for balance, and Eames held her hip with one hand and ran the other along her back. Ariadne panted at whimpered at the feel of them, feeling exquisitely full. This was real, as real as any totem, because she never got the details quite right in dreams. Even if the three of them fucked in the middle of a dream, it didn't feel like this. There was less preparation needed, less banging into walls or limbs or trying to deal with gravity. She bit down hard on her lip as she came, clamping down tight. Arthur hissed and came soon after. They reshuffled positions so that Eames pushed Ariadne onto her back beneath him, and he could slide inside her. "So beautiful," he panted as he thrust hard into her. Ariadne scored lines across his back, her own arched and twisting beneath him. Arthur watched lazily beside them, hands running across her stomach or Eames' arms.

They collapsed onto the bed, wedged tightly into the narrow space. "This is real," Arthur said quietly, eyes closed. He was stroking someone and was being comforted in much the same way by one of the others. It didn't matter who. "First step is to find out what the hell happened. Then we'll know what to do next."

"It's the future, Arthur," Eames said sleepily. "What if we're obsolete?"

"We will _never_ be obsolete," Arthur said, voice fierce. "Crime always exists. We just have to figure out how to insert ourselves into this time frame."

"I love it when you talk dirty," Eames snarked.

"Shut up, both of you," Ariadne said with a laugh, squished between them. "We'll worry about it when we get there. I mean, what if they naturally commit mind crime now?"

"Then we can train defense," Arthur said decisively.

"Boring," Eames declared.

"Safe," Arthur countered.

"Irrelevant until we know what's actually going on," Ariadne piped up. "Let's rest a bit before we venture outside."

"The girl's got a point," Eames said with a yawn. "I'm tired."

"I'm good at planning things, too," Ariadne said with a smile. She kissed them both, but refrained from wishing them sweet dreams. It seemed like too perverse a phrase at the moment.

***  
***


	2. No Time For Later Now

Trying to explain mind crime was actually easier than expected. The crew of Serenity were thieves and mercenaries, and had never really sat well with the Alliance. Simon listened avidly, his eyes straying to the PASIV in its silver case. He grasped the complexities of somnacin dosing and sedatives with such facility that Ariadne almost called him Yusuf once. River's fingers danced across a Cortex access panel faster than Arthur could follow, and she pulled up whatever records were still available on Earth That Was.

It was still amazing to think that they were five hundred years in the future, and Earth was gone. Now it was a network of terraformed planets and stars in a whole new solar system, an interlocking system of complex gravitational pulls that kept the complicated system together. It could take a little over two weeks to cross the system on a standard transport, but that was commonplace now, rather like taking a plane and a few trains from one continent to the next. Eames had remained silent at the stars floating past the ports, visibly shaken by all that he was hearing and seeing.

"Blue Sun was founded by Robert Fischer, Senior, once you eliminate all the dummy corporations and intermediaries," River declared after a time. "It was meant to be cutting edge technology but in the late twenty-first century slid into bioterrorism counterattacks and pharmaceutical development."

 _"Fischer?"_ Eames blurted, turning back to everyone crowded in the mess hall. "That pup?"

"You knew him?" Kaylee asked, looking around the room. "How exciting!"

"We started this," Ariadne said, eyes growing wide and her hand coming up to her mouth. "We made him break up Fischer-Morrow, and we did this..."

"He couldn't have known it was us," Arthur interjected, shaking his head.

 _"Bì zuǐ!"_ Mal said sharply, making a cutting motion with his hands. "Start over slower this time."

"That mind crime we were talking about," Arthur began slowly as Eames shook his head and Ariadne remained silent, "we did that. There's a concept called inception, where we plant an idea in someone's mind. We changed who he was and what he was going to be. We had him break up his father's company so that our employer wouldn't have to face a monopoly. We didn't follow up afterward..."

"There wasn't any need to." Eames got up and paced the mess hall in jerky steps. "We did the job, he broke up the company, we got paid, nobody got seriously hurt."

Ariadne stared down at her clasped hands in her lap. "Well, we did, didn't we? He must have known something, to freeze us like that."

"Pax is a distant relative of somnacin," River declared in the ensuing silence. All eyes swiveled to her. "How else would you calm an entire willful population?" she asked, eyes up toward the ceiling. She could remember the distant voices of the dead on Miranda, could remember feeling their ghosts pass through her. "How else could you carve your will into impressionable minds and create something new?"

Simon swallowed heavily. _"Mei mei..."_

River looked down at him. "You didn't know, Simon. I tried to tell you, but the words came out wrong. They cut me apart and put me back together wrong, and I'm still broken. I'm still not finished. I only look like a girl, but I'm not, am I?"

Zoe looked away from the rest of them, arms crossed over her chest. So much lost in trying to get the signal out, and there was only more chaos in its wake. "I'm going to check on where we are," she said abruptly, getting up to leave. "Wouldn't do to have their security after us. We're not exactly unknown entities anymore."

 _"Wŏ de mā hé tā de fēngkuáng de wàisheng dōu,"_ Mal muttered, running his hands through his hair. "Why in blazing hell do I get caught up in this kind of mess?"

"'Cause you can't help yourself, Mal," Jayne said helpfully. "You can't just leave well enough alone."

Mal turned and pointed at Jayne. "You know I didn't go looking for this."

"You never go lookin', do ya? But you sure don't turn away."

River covered her ears and started rocking in her chair. Kaylee looked around the room with a frightened air as she tried to comfort River. "Don'tcha see you're makin' her upset? Stop it!"

"Lookit," Jayne began slowly, hands up in a placating gesture. "I did my part, and I ain't running. But takin' on the entire Alliance or Blue Sun just ain't smart, even for you."

"Who said anything about taking them down?" Mal protested, throwing up his hands.

"You could just drop us off somewhere," Ariadne began, interrupting before they were completely ignored. "We really appreciate you getting us out of there. Maybe if you just point us in the right direction, we can figure out what our next move is."

"Bishop to queen," River murmured, her eyes screwed up tight. Ariadne flicked a glance in her direction but then looked back at Mal. "Don't let her go, don't let them out of your sight!" River screeched. "They know, they know, they know!"

"Okay, this is just creepifying," Jayne declared, getting to his feet. Ignoring Kaylee's soothing gestures and Simon's blathering about smoothers, Jayne pulled River to her feet. "Open your eyes, girl." He waited patiently until she did so. "The rest of us ain't you."

"Jayne! Stop it, be nice," Kaylee pleaded.

Jayne ignored her and pushed Simon away when he tried to peel Jayne off of River. "So you got to say _who_ you're talkin' 'bout and _what_ they know. Use names an' things or we'll just think you're still out of your gourd."

River's lips trembled. "You make sense," she said, surprise in her tone.

"Don't take no _tiān cái_ to see that, does it?" Jayne let her go and soothed the skin of her arm where he had left livid marks. "I ain't gonna kill your sister, Doc," he told Simon derisively. "And she ain't no fragile doll. No call to treat her like one." He sat down heavily in chair next to Arthur. "No offense, but leaving's a horrible idea. You three ain't gonna survive out there on your own. You just won't."

"Captain," Kaylee began.

"This is a mess," Mal said in a loud voice. "Everyone, just sit the hell down!" Eames settled into a chair, squeezing in next to Ariadne. River fell gracelessly into her chair and Simon sat back down next to Kaylee. She was making these pleading eyes at him; really, she had to stop collecting strays. It was getting to be a bad habit. Mal paced a bit. "Look. We gotta face facts, and the facts are that we don't have money enough or people enough to do anything right now. You three," he said, pointing to the newcomers, "were a wrench in the works I didn't want or need. I was hoping you'd be some kind of tech we could fence, get this boat to flying longer. If our little Reader says they're onto you being gone, it means we're in for a world of hurt we're not ready for."

"We're not exactly helpless," Arthur began tightly.

"We know our way around weapons and we know our way around a PASIV."

"Well, nobody uses that kind of thing now," Mal shot back.

Eames flashed him a grin. "Well, then. Doesn't that mean that they're defenseless against us?" All eyes turned to him. "Just think for a moment. Your doctor said that he didn't think we were going to survive being thawed out."

"The protocols were all wrong," Simon said, shaking his head. "It's a miracle you're even alive."

"I'm a stubborn bastard," Eames agreed, nodding. "Now, we've been out of the picture long enough they probably don't even know who or what we are."

"Only the president knew you were something to keep," River whispered, arms around herself as she shifted in the chair restlessly. Kaylee soothingly rubbed circles onto her back. "Not why, never why. Nothing in records survived. Three silver boxes, important to keep, too dangerous to let go of."

"So they _don't_ know who we are?" Ariadne asked, looking at River. She shook her head, hair shifting to cover her face. "And they _don't_ know what we can do?" River shook her head again, and she grasped her own arm tightly, covering the marks Jayne had made.

Arthur drummed his fingers across the tabletop. "How hard would it be to find the current Blue Sun president?" he asked, seemingly idly. Ariadne and Eames knew him too well for that; something was cooking in that mind of his.

"It's _Blue Sun,"_ Mal said. "That ought to be answer enough."

"We're not from around here," Eames drawled. "Indulge the man."

"Nobody's seen him. Nobody knows where he is. The office building is like an impenetrable fort."

Arthur kept drumming his fingers on the desk, then turned to River. "This thing you were using to look up stuff. Can you get in?"

"The President is a title assumed by the lead researcher for the Academy," River said. "They train Operatives and Readers and others for the Alliance."

"River, why didn't you say something?" Simon asked in disbelief.

"I tried to tell you, but the words looped in on themselves." She started rocking in her chair again. "I'm still there. They still have me, they still go through the motions." She put her hands over her face, nails digging into her forehead. Kaylee pulled her hands away and started rocking her slightly.

Simon looked from River to Arthur. "That PASIV," he said, pointing to the silver case. "You said you go into minds with it. You can plant ideas." The three of them nodded. "Then you can probably help me fix her."

"Simon..." Kaylee began.

"She won't ever be the little sister I left behind when I went to MedAcad," Simon said slowly, "but maybe we can change things enough that she doesn't feel broken."

"If she knows the president of Blue Sun, then we can get at them," Arthur mused.

"You're thinking of taking it down from the inside out, aren't you?" Ariadne said quietly.

"Best kind of revenge, don't you think?" Arthur told them. Eames smiled suddenly. "What?"

"We did it once, we can do it again." He leaned forward on the mess, folding his arms comfortably. "The thing is, you start small," he told Simon. "You don't just tell someone to destroy themselves. It's against the grain. You have to make them think it was their idea all along, and then they do it."

"That's what you did to that Fischer guy," Mal asked, brows furrowed.

"That's exactly what we did."

"So if Blue Sun tumbles..."

"Then the rest of the military might tumble. Blue Sun funds them." Mal pursed his lips and looked around the room. "How do I get myself into these messes again?"

"It's more like not getting yourself _out,"_ Jayne said with a shrug.

"You're not helping, Jayne," Mal growled.

River looked at Ariadne in pain. "It's scary in my head. They altered my mind, and reality is no longer linear."

She reached across the table and grasped River's hand tightly. "We know dreams. We'll figure out what to do."

***

It was like being slapped in the face with color and noise and shapes of all sizes. Buried within the mess was a cacophony of languages, images and facts. There were children playing within the messy landscape, bouncing in and out between the shapes, shouting at the top of their lungs. Their expressions shifted between laughing and crying and screaming, all within seconds, and somewhere in the distance was a fire.

"Well." Eames smacked his lips and looked around. "Now that I am thoroughly confused, which direction do we start with first?"

Ariadne approached one of the disjointed shapes. Reaching out, the edges blurred under fingers, as if it was something drawn in pastels. "This is like a child's drawing," she said, turning around. "We're going to have to make sense of things for her."

"I thought you made a landscape?" Arthur said, frowning at one of the children laughing at him.

"I did, but I think it was reinterpreted."

"That doesn't happen," Arthur said, shaking his head. "She's not supposed to be able to alter the dream that much."

"Why not? Who knows how they fucked up her mind?" Eames offered. "Ever dive into a kid's brain?" The others shook their head. "They made her completely psychotic, according to Simon. So it's probably similar. It's utter stream of consciousness. Add to that the fact that she's psychic..." He knelt down beside a crying child and held out his hand. The little girl hesitantly put her hand in his. "Hullo, love. What's your name?"

"River," the crying girl said, rubbing at her eyes.

"How old are you?" Eames asked, holding his other hand out as a warning for the others not to approach.

"Five." She hiccupped. _"Ge ge_ says I shouldn't talk to strangers."

"You shouldn't, and you're a bright girl. I've made friends with him, actually. He's told me all sorts of wonderful things about you."

"He's a boob."

Eames laughed as she smiled. "Well, most big brothers are. Why don't you take me to Simon? I must admit, I'm a little lost in here."

"Me, too."

"Ah. So we're all lost here together?" Five year old River nodded. "Well, that just won't do. Come with me. Let's meet my friends Arthur and Ariadne. They're very nice, even if Arthur seems mean sometimes." He winked at River, making her laugh.

"Hey!" Arthur cried, folding his arms over his chest. "That's not fair."

"I remember you," River said shyly.

"Yes, well, that's good," Eames replied, deciding just to go with it for now. "That means none of us are strangers."

"Do you like drawing?" Ariadne asked, smudging the bright red colors between her fingers. River brightened. "Show me what you can draw. Draw a path back home."

She had built the Tam estate, thinking it might be a comforting place for her. At least, Simon had thought it would be. But as the little girl in front of Ariadne began to draw, she could tell right away that the structure was not a building of any kind, but a ship.

 _Serenity,_ to be precise.

The world around them shifted, and they were standing in a field of stars and worlds. "There's monsters in the dark," River said, looking more like the girl she had been before she left home. "They have teeth that bite and hands that scratch. They went insane from the Pax."

"It was never meant to be airborne," Eames muttered. "Putting everyone to sleep... What were they thinking?"

"Control," River said, turning around. Her hair hung in bloody hanks, and she carried an axe in both hands. "Because they like to meddle, because they can't leave well enough alone, because they have to make it neat and orderly, shove us all into boxes and think for us. They _meddle."_

"River," Ariadne said, voice firm. "Who controls _you?"_

Her face crumpled and she collapsed down. "They pull the strings and watch the marionettes go, layers of triggers buried beneath the code. Broadwave blast, watch the stars collide and shift and see what happens next. But observing the system disturbs it, and the box can't be opened more than once. They can't repeat the experiment, no matter how hard they try, and the river runs past its end to puddle on the floor." She looked up at them, desperation on her face. "You have to make them stop."

Ariadne knelt down in front of her and took the axes from her limp hands. They disappeared as she threw them away. She brushed the bloody hair back from River's face. She was eighteen now, and had never really lived. Ariadne remembered what it was like to be eighteen, going to high school dances and worrying about crushes on boys and if her grades were good enough to go to school abroad. River didn't have that kind of life, and never would. "Show me the way home, River. Show me where it's quiet."

River turned and pointed, looking confused. "But the dead goes there," she said, fingers twisting together. "All of the dead are there."

Eames and Arthur helped River to her feet. "Then we're in good company. We're supposed to be dead ourselves, remember?"

A smile bloomed on River's face and she nodded. "I hear them, and sometimes I see them. Sometimes they don't even know they're dead. They whisper, all the tangled secrets they couldn't keep while alive, and I know them all."

"Where do you keep them?" Arthur asked, brows knit. Simon might be upset, but if he was involved too...

"Everywhere. Nowhere."

"Oh, well that won't do, love. Even I know that," Eames said with a grin.

Arthur plucked a notebook out of thin air. He missed his Moleskines, and he plucked a Waterford pen out of nothingness. "You need to write them down."

"What?"

"The physical act of writing forces you to organize your thoughts," Arthur explained. "You prioritize what needs to go where, and then you can file it properly. It's like taking notes in class."

"I've never needed to take notes in class."

Ariadne smirked. "Time to learn from the master." The world shifted around them so that they were in an open air classroom. "Go on, sit down."

River sat at the desk, which was smooth wood grain. She blinked at the notebook laid down in front of her, as well as the heavy pen Arthur handed her. He sat down next to her, and Ariadne and Eames sat down across from her. The sun shone overhead, reminding her of Osiris, and she could see the Tam estate in the distance. River shifted uneasily in her seat. "I need my stylus and integrated board. I know how to use those."

"You're going to learn how to use these," Arthur told her seriously. He plucked another notebook and pen from the air and opened it in front of him. The page was blank, and he held his pen poised over it. "You _do_ know how to write in the future, don't you?"

River flushed with impatience. "Of course. It's not a dead art. Your languages are dead, but calligraphy is still practiced by all the Companions and elite Scribes."

Arthur scrawled his name across the top page. "I'm not talking about calligraphy. I'm talking about organizing your thoughts so you don't leave them a tangled mess others can't follow. I'm talking about _imposing_ linearity to this mess."

"If I could do that, it would be done. They took it all away. They had their neural knives and psychoactives, pinned me in place and _worked on me in dreams."_

Ariadne smiled and propped her chin up in her hands. "Isn't that what we're doing? But with your cooperation this time?"

"We're not changing what you think, River," Eames said in the face of her fearsome frown. "Just _how._ This," he began, arms waving around him, "is all a construct. This is language. Images, meaning, depth..." He winked at Arthur's impressed look. "All of these things are part of language, and you're so busy taking it in all at once that you can't process it. You can't communicate it in a meaningful way, so the rest don't take you seriously." He pointed at the table. "Let's start small, then. Instead of condensing all of time and space as Arthur would have you start with, try this."

River frowned at him. "I don't understand."

"Pretend I'm blind. Describe this desk. Tell me what it's like."

"It's a wooden desk."

He gave her a lazy grin. "What's a desk?"

River's frowned deepened. "This is infantile."

"Baby steps, River. When you can describe this desk, you'll know how to describe anything."

Frowning deeply, River stumbled across the description. It was mostly dimensions and weights, concrete facts and figures. "How does it feel?" Ariadne asked, picking up on Eames' thread of thought. "Textures are important. Colors. Feelings it gives you." In near tears, River started again, sticking to concrete facts and figures. Ariadne reached out to touch her arm, and she flinched. "How does the desk make you feel?"

"I want to throw it away!" she cried, nearly sobbing.

"Why? Because you can't do it?"

She shook her head. "My grandmother had a desk like this. She died, and _Ba ba_ got rid of it. He said it was broken and useless because the drawers stuck and the top was scratched and it too heavy to use." She shook her head more violently, hair flying. "I can't do this!"

"You _can,"_ Arthur insisted. He pushed the pen into her hand. "Write it down. Write it all down, everything."

Her pen strokes were jagged violent things, nearly ripping through the thick paper. She turned the page when she got to the end, continued writing and nearly ripping through it. River kept turning pages, faster and faster, ink pouring across the page. When she was done, she put her head down on the desk and cried silently, Eames massaging her shoulder as Arthur read through what she had written.

"And?"

"Legible. Nonlinear at first, but there's a story in here," he murmured, turning the pages. His brows knit in concentration as he read, pages flipping fast. He put the book down at the end. "Now we need to file it."

River picked her head up. "What?"

"You're going to learn to do things the way we used to, back on Earth That was," Arthur said with a nod. "You'll pick it up. I think all the new things they've developed have helped overall, but there's too much happening much too fast." Arthur smiled at River. "Like when you accessed Blue Sun's information online earlier."

"It's the Cortex."

He nearly laughed at the pedantic tone she took. "You did that quickly. And I'll bet it wasn't publicly available."

"Of course not," River sniffed indignantly. "But it was only one gig encryption. That's easy to break apart into its base code."

"The rest of us can't do that. We don't work as fast as you do." Arthur smiled. "We need to slow you down."

"Our genius has fucking ADD?" Eames asked, snorting with laughter. Ariadne smacked the back of his head.

Arthur pointed at Eames with his pen. "You've had your burst of intellect for the day. Shut up." Eames only laughed, shaking his head as Arthur turned back to River. "They increased your potential, Simon said. So they increased the connections in your brain, they sped up how fast you think and assess information. The problem is, they never stopped to think about how they would be able to receive it. You can process it quickly, but it goes so fast the messages get jumbled up and interconnected." He stood up and a row of archive grade filing cabinets appeared in the wall beside them. "I think we all got it wrong."

"They call me moonbrain," River said, her voice almost sulky. "They think I'm crazy."

"Moonlight. They even have that here?" Ariadne asked curiously.

"On a world, there might be. It wouldn't be like Earth That Was or its moon." River looked up into the sky overhead and there was instantly a low hanging moon. "It's not like that."

"Moonlight's reflected. Not as bright, maybe, but still light." Arthur opened up one of the archive drawers and beckoned for River to approach. "You probably need to do something similar with how your thoughts work. You need to reflect them, slow them down, make them sit still."

"I'm disorganized and psychotic," she told him, rising from her seat. "Simon gives me daily injections."

"It doesn't do enough, does it?" River shook her head. "And honestly, aren't there pills for that kind of thing?"

River looked at Arthur. "You change too much at once."

"Hopefully for the better," Arthur agreed.

***

The rest of the dream time had been spent putting thoughts to paper. At first it had been violent, angry strokes that made her feel as though the pen was a blade slicing through paper. The others coaxed her into slowing down, taking time to really form her letters. "Or do the Mandarin characters if that feels more natural," Arthur had told her with a shrug. "The point is, _slow down._ You need to think about what you're writing before you do it. Think about _why_ you're writing it down. Feel the pen dragging on the paper, feel how it slows you down. That's what allows you to start organizing things."

Ariadne had reminded her that dream time was much slower than real time, and that she could take as long as she needed. Eames grew bored and decided to go for a swim in the pool on the Tam estate, and Ariadne took apart the rest of the dreamscape around them. The Tam house disappeared, and all that was left were rows upon rows of file cabinets and bookshelves waiting to be filled. _Pick a topic, and start writing it down._

River woke up with a gasp. After that, she had spent time scribbling. Simon had been amazed at how focused she seemed, rather like when they had been putting Serenity back together after the events on Miranda. "She's... closer, I guess. I think I've come to realize she won't ever be the same as she was before the Academy took her, but she's much closer to how she was." It didn't come as surprise to him when Arthur mentioned her rapid processing speed leading to the disjointed speech. "She had always been at least ten steps ahead of everyone else. I was in the top three percent of my class, but she always made me look like an idiot."

Arthur nodded slowly. "I have a proposition for you."

Simon looked at him suspiciously. "What is it?"

He held up one of the vials of somnacin. "This is what made some of that possible. I don't know if she's going to need regular tune ups or not, but there's only so much of this that we've got. Can you make it? Would you be able to handle the dosing of the sedatives and the somnacin?"

Simon took it from him and stared at the clear liquid. "I'd need a spectroscope, probably, to get the actual chemical formula. This isn't exactly a standard compound."

Arthur nodded, and followed Simon's gaze toward River. "I told her about my system for keeping thoughts organized. It looks like it might be helping her so far. But the biggest threat to all of our security right now is Blue Sun."

He didn't know much about the mind crime business, but Simon was indeed as smart as he claimed to be. "You want River to help."

"And you. The rest of the crew would have to be in on it, too."

Simon crossed his arms over his chest. "You three are doing it for revenge. River and I maybe for revenge, too. That won't be enough for the crew."

"Who's to say that River won't find account information that would fund all of you for a while?" Arthur said. "Plus, this is a field that has apparently been dead for five hundred years. We would have the entire market to ourselves. No competition, no one to say that we're overcharging for our services."

"How much did you used to charge?"

Arthur's smile was mercenary. "Let's just say we didn't _have_ to keep on working. It took a lot to fund multiple identities, but there was still plenty left over to live off of the investments if we wanted to."

"So you'd buy their involvement." Simon paused to think about it. "Blue Sun has a pharmaceutical division. That would be a big score, too. So we'd be flush with cash for a while on multiple fronts."

"You don't plan this sort of thing often, do you?" Arthur asked, smiling.

"I'm a _doctor."_

"Well, the only way this will work is for it to be a surgical strike. So we'll definitely need those skills involved in the planning."

***  
***


	3. It Rises With The Fall

Jayne hovered outside of the rec area, not sure if he should go inside. River was there, a pile of drawing pads on it with neat rows of Chinese calligraphy beside her. She was concentrating on the writing, and Eames had been pretty clear about letting her do that to clear out her head. Jayne had been tempted to ask him how the dynamics worked between two men and a woman, but figured that was a question best left alone.

"You think too loud," River said, looking up at Jayne.

"Yeah, well, they're planning all that _go se_ downstairs. Took over the entire cargo area so I can't work out." He waved in her general direction. "They said this would help you think clear and stuff. Is it working?"

River actually seemed to seriously ponder that. "Not in the way we were all led to believe," she said slowly.

Jayne frowned. "So what does it do?"

"Arthur believed this would slow me down, force me to think in linear fashion. It really doesn't. I continue thinking in terms of a branched and layered reality, all in confluence." She could tell that the vocabulary was over Jayne's head, but he was game. _No knives hurled at me, still okay,_ he was thinking, and River paused. "I'm not violent," she said abruptly. "It's not like that. Not on purpose." She pressed her lips together. "Everything moves in so many directions at once." She indicated herself. "I am a three dimensional object. But reality is actually thirteen dimensions."

"Now that's lying," Jayne said, shaking his head. "You ain't big enough to be thirteen dimensions. You're an itty bitty thing."

River smiled faintly. "I was going to say that I can perceive all thirteen at once. But thank you. I think."

"What? Ain't your fault your brain works funny. And you're pretty when you ain't crazy and all."

"I suspect I will always be 'crazy,'" she said, using air quotes. Jayne snickered; it was a very close mimicry of Simon's behavior. "It's modulating that crazy. It's... Arthur perceives it as slowing me down. It's more like picking the three dimensions that matter to everyone else and discarding the importance of the other ten."

"Huh. And what does the other ten look like?"

"They're bound so small and tight as to be only visible on a subatomic level," River said. "It's a physics thing," she said, copying the way Kaylee or Ariadne might speak. It seemed to work, because Jayne's expression shifted to one of understanding. "I remember too many disparate things at once and can't always associate them in ways others would understand."

"I told ya before. Start with how you speak. Use them nouns and stuff. And not those fancy Core words you got. Not everybody had book learning."

She smiled shyly at him. "Thank you for the reminder."

"Yeah, see? That's pretty." Jayne stopped when he realized what he had said. "Well. You know. Just saying."

"Just saying," River repeated softly. She rose to her feet and approached him. "I believe I am a clockwork thing looking like a girl. The others disagree. You are a weapons master. You are aware of what I can and cannot do, and that there are triggers." She stopped two feet in front of Jayne and looked at him hopefully. "Am I a girl? Or just the weapon they fear me to be?"

"You can be both," Jayne said with a shrug. "You know, just because something's sharp don't mean it's always dangerous." He turned away slightly when she cocked her head to the side in consideration of his words. "Depends on how you use it."

"Oh." She blinked in surprise and then smiled. "Oh. I understand now."

She darted forward quickly and dropped a soft kiss against his cheek, then darted away faster than Jayne could blink. _"Xie xie,"_ she whispered.

Jayne frowned as he went into the rec room. She was a girl, and of legal age. And undoubtedly a thousand flavors of crazy and complicated, which was something he didn't need at all. He gathered up the pads of paper she had left behind, pausing at a set of characters he could almost read. His book learning had been weak as a child, especially in Mandarin, but he could still recognize a few.

"I... fear... house? Home?" He twisted the characters sideways to see if he could recognize that better. It didn't work. But there was Blue Sun on the page, as well as the characters that would spell out his own name, as well as that of the crew. She was afraid of what would happen, of what this current job was going to be like.

Well, then. Perhaps she was a lot saner than anyone else realized.

***

Henry Ballinger was currently in charge of the research division at Blue Sun. Since the theft of deep storage equipment, the entire company had been thrown into an uproar. He hated getting his schedule shifted around. Instead of working first shift, he had been thrown to third shift. It really messed with his circadian rhythms, and he had mentioned to his physician that he needed to take sleeping aids at night to help him sleep. It was also causing him to have horrible rebound insomnia when his shift was over, however, and his physician decided that a vacation would be needed to reshuffle his biological clock. "Go somewhere out of the way," his physician had said. "Then start shifting your schedule slowly." He even had a sleep schedule that could slowly shift his circadian rhythm around. Henry supposed that he could do it at home, but on vacation no one would bother him. It had also been years since he had taken one.

Bellerophon was a lovely place, according to the brochure. The hanging gardens in some of the floating estates looked very similar to his favorite park on Londinium, so that helped.

He was greeted at his rented estate on the second week of his stay by a petite brunette. "I'm just here as a courtesy of the booking agent," she had said, clipboard in hand. "We want to be sure that our service meets your needs."

Impressed, Henry let her inside the house. It didn't occur to him to hide his passkey code, and he answered her survey. It included sleep habits, but because it was bundled in with other questions on appetite and activities he enjoyed during his stay, it didn't seem out of place.

He never did catch her name.

He was surprised to see his physician on Bellerophon a few days later. "Doctor Perry! You didn't have to come out all this way just to meet me."

"You should be about done with the sleep shift, correct?" Perry asked, brusque as ever.

"I suppose so," Henry remarked.

"Are you ready to get back to work?"

With a sigh, Henry nodded. "I suppose so. It's been very lovely being on vacation. It's been my first in years. Thank you for suggesting it."

Perry smiled thinly and indicated that Henry should sit down on his patio. "Perhaps you can close your eyes and imagine yourself back to work. A visualization exercise, where you picture it in your mind and then describe it out loud in words. It's very helpful to decrease anxiety for many people."

He laughed and nodded. "Very good, doctor. But I'm not terribly good at words like that. It's partly why they're sending me to third shift."

Perry retrieved a small book from his lab coat pocket. "Then perhaps if you simply look at the designs and plans of the Blue Sun building? Imagine yourself walking into the building, through the halls, into the different offices. Point them out to me as you go."

"Oh. I can do that."

Henry opened the book. At first it seemed blank, but when he blinked, it was suddenly bright and alive with colors and design specifications. "Ah. There we are." He pointed at each and every room he could remember, describing who worked there and what he could remember of what it looked like. "Here's the pharma labs," he said, indicating a hallway marked "Red Hall" in Mandarin script. "And my lab is back here," he said, pointing at "Green Hall."

"And the Blue Sun president?" Perry asked idly.

"Oh, Pietro? He's in the Grand Salon. That's in Yellow Hall." The Yellow and Red Halls were actually close to each other on the plans. "I don't have any business down there. I still run sims on the students."

Perry gave him a curt nod. "Any promising ones, by any chance?"

"Lawrence says that one or two might hold the same promise Miss Tam did, but I don't think so. There had been some coherence to her dream states when Matthias did the testing. These girls don't have that at all." Henry shook his head. "No, I don't think we'll ever have another Miss Tam. A shame, too. I think I know what Matthias overlooked in the programming stages, why it all went wrong."

"Really?" Perry asked, eyebrow lofted in curiosity. "Do tell."

It didn't seem incongruous at all that his personal physician was interested in what he did for a living, or that he understood its complexities. "Well, the neural stripping had completely obliterated her amygdala. There's no emotional regulation, so there's nothing to give credence to one information feed over another, no sense of importance for processing. The problem with all of this is that if you _don't_ strip the amygdala, but some other part of the cortex, there's less stability in the encoded signal triggers. The self preservation instincts are too strong. I'm still trying to work around that, but I don't have any luck yet."

"I'm sure the answer will come," Perry remarked with a shrug. "Is there any way to reverse the stripping that was done?"

"Not at all. The damage is permanent. Matthias knew that, but pushed on ahead anyway. Important figures of Parliament were present in some of the early testing, after all. He couldn't look foolish in front of them." Henry paused and leaned backward in his chair. "I suppose if various parts of the cortex was rewired, if other circuits were implanted that could bypass the amygdala? I admit, I don't even know how that would work."

Perry stood and clapped Henry on the shoulder. "Well, I'm sure you'll do just fine on your return to work. This vacation has been quite useful."

Henry smiled and stood as well. _"Xie xie, bó shì,"_ he said with a deep, respectful bow.

Perry left the estate with a nod of his head. Henry continued to sun himself on his deck.

Once outside of Henry's view, Perry became Eames again, and he met up with Arthur. He handed over the notebook. "This is just too easy."

"Just wait," Arthur said, shaking his head. "The president of the company won't be quite so easy to break."

"They don't know what to look for, darling." Eames flashed him a brilliant grin. "I think we'll be able to do this after all."

***

Pietro Gray had risen to the top of Blue Sun by sheer force of will and underhanded tactics more than by the grace of his intellect. He had enough underlings to do the research that needed to be done, and he oversaw them all with an iron fist. He had assumed the position of president of Blue Sun, and he had a tight affiliation with the Academy and various Alliance outposts. He didn't assume that whatever he wanted would be the way Parliament would vote, but sometimes it was a near thing. If he gave his support, nine times out of ten he wound up influencing policy.

A young woman he didn't recognize came into his office. "Sir?"

"Who are you?"

"Hay Lin was sick today, sir. I am her replacement for today."

Pietro sighed. "Very well. I have this memo for the Prime Chancellor that needs to be transcribed."

The woman smiled and nodded. "Certainly, sir." She approached, the sensible heels clicking across his marble floor. She sat down much too close to him, and Pietro frowned. "Is something wrong, sir?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but she lunged forward and plunged a needle into his arm. He felt the sting of something go in, and she skittered backward out of reach gracefully. He lurched forward, stumbling over his own feet before crashing face first into the floor.

The last thing Pietro Gray saw was her high heels heading out of the room.

When he came to, he was tied to his office chair and staring at River Tam. _Holy shit, I'm going to die._

"If you're as smart as you think you are, you don't have to die," River said in a calm voice. She smiled, though her eyes were cold. "You did many bad, bad things to me and to other students of the Academy. You still are."

"I do what needs to be done for the Alliance," Pietro said stiffly. He truly believed that, too. A few lives in the grand scheme of things was a worthy sacrifice.

"You _meddle,"_ River said, and suddenly she was _right there,_ right in front of him with a knife pressed beneath his eye. "Do you see, Dr. Gray? Do you see as I see?"

He didn't know how to answer that. He didn't know what she wanted him to say, and he was literally balanced on a knife's edge.

"Your mind is empty," River said quietly. Pietro didn't even try breathing. "Tell me the combination to your office safe."

"What safe?"

"Every office has a safe. Didn't they tell you that?" Her tone was light and mocking, and Pietro felt a cold sweat drip down his spine. This is what he had created. This was what they had wanted her to become, and it was sitting right in his lap with a knife against his cheek. "Tell me the combination."

He said the first three numbers that came to mind, though he didn't understand what she was talking about. Two men he didn't recognize took down the massive painting of the known 'verse behind him, and there was a massive combination safe behind it. They spun the dial and inside of the safe were books and ledgers and data cartridges that he hadn't known were there. All of it was put inside a bag he hadn't realized the men were carrying. "You can't do this," he said abruptly, watching the men leave.

"This is what you made me for," River said, pressing the knife infinitesimally harder against his cheek. He could feel the blood well to the surface, could see a drop run down the blade of the knife in his peripheral vision. "I am everything you made me to be, Dr. Gray. Aren't you proud?"

"Come back to us, River," he said, licking his dry lips. "We can help you. We can get you off the wanted lists, take the triggers out, give you a position in Parliament. It's what was meant to happen when the training was done."

She tilted her head to the side, lips parted in an almost vacant expression. Only, it wasn't truly vacant. Her eyes were still sharp and calculating. "No."

"We can help you. We can fix this."

River smirked at him. "I know you can't, Dr. Gray. You're the same as Dr. Matthias. His sin was pride. Isn't that yours as well?"

A chill rolled down Pietro's spine. Of course he had seen the security holos of Matthias' death. Everyone had, and he had approved the Operative's involvement to get River Tam back. He hadn't realized he would lose Matthias in the course of that investigation, but the man had been sloppy anyway. Still, Pietro had no intention of following in his footsteps.

"I can make your problems go away, River. We have the best minds available here. We are the front runners in technology and pharmaceuticals. We can fix this."

She pressed the knife fractionally harder, increasing the flow of blood along the blade. It trickled onto her fingers and dripped onto his lap. He spared a fraction of a thought for his trousers, spun from Shinon's finest looms, but squelched the thought. The price of the dry cleaning wouldn't matter if he was dead.

"Oh, yes, Dr. Gray. Set your priorities straight."

She grinned and pulled her hand back. She carefully licked the blood from her fingers and then the knife, making it seem like almost a sensuous move. "I am what you made me, Dr. Gray. I do adore the Pax. It makes this so... _delicious."_

There was a warmth in his lap, and he knew he had just lost control of his bladder at the dark look in her eyes. _Wo de tian,_ he was going to die.

River laughed. "I'm not going to kill you, Dr. Gray." She smiled, and it chilled him to the bone. "What I'm going to do is so much worse." She backhanded him hard enough to have the back of his skull strike his hard-backed chair, making him lose consciousness.

When he came to, he was seated at his desk. There was no one in the room, and he wasn't tied up. There was no evidence of having urinated on himself. He turned to look at the painting of the 'verse behind him, then carefully got up and tried to pry it from the wall to reveal the safe. It didn't come up. There was no safe.

His communications officer was shouting through the door, pounding on it. That was what woke him up. On wobbly legs, Pietro opened the door. "Weston?" he rasped.

"Red Hall's been cleared out, sir. All power and comm lines were down for the past hour, and security feeds were disabled. Everything's gone. And the CFO mentioned that you just authorized a transfer in the accounts."

"That's impossible!" Pietro shouted, feeling suddenly wide awake and in command of all his faculties. "I was tied up in here! River Tam held me at knife point! The little bitch cut my face!"

Weston eyed him strangely. "Sir? There are no marks on your face. And River Tam certainly was _not_ here during the power outage. Even without comms or cameras, our security team would have known about that."

Pietro touched the cheek that River had cut into, and there was no dried blood there. He looked around at his office, that seemed pristine. "Where's Hay Lin?"

"You sent her home, sir. She was feeling ill."

"Was there a replacement sent in?"

"No, sir." Weston surreptitiously took a half step back. "Perhaps I should find the CFO."

"No, goddammit! She was here!"

"She hasn't been seen since the attack on Osiris, sir," Weston dutifully told him. "She wouldn't come here."

Pietro pressed his lips together, curbing the urge to smack Weston across the face or fire him. "Check the planetary grid. We know what ship she sails on. Find it!"

But no records of a Firefly-class ship were found, and rumors began that Pietro was starting to crack. The loss of the research and medications were massive, as well as the direct financial losses that couldn't be traced.

As far as the rest of Blue Sun and Parliament were concerned, Dr. Pietro Gray was damaged goods, and no one wanted anything to do with him any longer. His career was finished.

***

"Here's your cut," Mal said, handing Fanty and Mingo a credit stick. "Pleasure doing business with the two of you."

"You _must_ tell me who your benefactor was," Fanty said with a smile, pocketing the stick.

"In case they have need of our other ships?" Mingo added.

Mal laughed and got up. "I think we're flush for a while, folks. But I'll keep it in mind if other jobs come up."

He nodded at Jayne at the bar, who was keeping River company. The two of them were cautiously spending time with each other, and Mal had to admit that he got over his qualms about it pretty quickly. Jayne had a point about her; Simon coddled her something fierce and Kaylee would never push her hard enough to fit in with everyone else. She had a bag slung over her shoulder which was stocked with notebooks and old fashioned pens, and when truly disturbed she would start scribbling madly in it. Jayne reminded her sometimes, but there wasn't a meanness in it. As he approached, he saw Jayne pick up her hand gently and lean in. River turned her head toward him, lips parted to speak, and their mouths met. Startled, they both leaned back and away from each other, eyes wide as they stared. Mal took the opportunity to lean in between them, and slung an arm about both their shoulders. "Well, this round at the Maidenhead seems to be going our way. Time to meet our other friends, right?"

"Uh, Mal? We'll catch up." Jayne nodded at River. "Me an' River got to talk a bit more."

"You sure it's just talking you're doing?"

Jayne flushed with anger. "Now you look here, Mal..."

River unwound Mal's arm from her shoulder and patted Jayne's thigh gently. "Our Captain is no doubt concerned for the future."

"Of course I am," Mal said, rocking back slightly on his heels and nodding. "A concerned captain looking after my crew."

River smiled sweetly at him. "I promise not to break Jayne and to use contraception at all times. I'm not ready to be a mother yet."

Jayne spewed his drink across the counter and Mal stood stock still. "Wh-what?"

She turned that same beatific smile toward Jayne. "I have seen many interesting things in the minds our new friends that I find intriguing. I wish to try them for myself. I'm acrobatic, as you know. I'm sure it will be easy to replicate."

"Okay, now that's just way too much for my virgin ears," Mal interjected, turning away from Jayne's interested expression. "Just... Don't tell me nothing about it, don't make Simon come crying to me and for god's sake, no babies on my ship!"

River laughed as Mal raced out of the Maidenhead, forgetting to get his gun out of the weapons check carrel. She turned back to Jayne. "I hope I was not too forward or presumptuous."

Jayne snorted and gave her an almost playful leer. "Presume away."

In the meantime, Mal burst into the bar where he had left Zoe, Ariadne, Eames and Arthur. "Give me a double of whatever they're having," he told the waitress. Zoe merely lofted an eyebrow at him in curiosity. "River. And Jayne. Together-like. My brain simply don't need to go there."

"They look cute together," Ariadne said with a smile. "I hope it works out."

"Have you seen Jayne?" Zoe asked, eying her oddly.

"Not so bright in the academics, but I believe that's a moot point in your line of work?" Eames said politely. Arthur merely coughed to hide his laughter.

"I don't want to talk about them anymore. Where'd Simon go?"

"He's talking with that other friend of yours to start breaking up the goods into smaller shipments." Arthur took a slow sip of his drink. "It should probably be worth the hassle of putting up with us, I believe."

"Well... Things don't often go smooth for us," Mal admitted. "This went down smooth."

"I'm surprised electronic security really hasn't changed much in five hundred years," Arthur replied almost sadly. "I was expecting a challenge."

"So there could possibly be a future for us out here," Eames said. "It would take time to build up the contacts we once had, get our names established."

Mal nodded. "That it would. Not to mention getting your own boat and pilot."

"There's that to consider. Or we could just continue to work with you," Ariadne said, smiling brightly at Mal. "We like our room. Well, mostly, but we could always change a few things around a bit. We have money now to pay you room and board as passengers, or we can figure out how to help out as crew."

"We can figure that one out as we go, I suppose," Mal replied. His drink arrived and he downed it in a single swallow. "Keep it coming," he told the waitress, handing her the glass back.

"Put it on our tab," Eames offered, giving the waitress a lazy smile. "The least we can do as a thank you," he said to Mal, shrugging at his surprise. "You didn't have to help us."

"With a six figure payout in the offing?" Zoe asked, amused.

"Well, there's that. But teaching us things to fit in? That went above and beyond."

"Whatever puts a bee in the Alliance's bonnet makes me smile. And some days it's hard to remember I know how, _dong ma?"_

"To a successful partnership," Ariadne said, lifting her glass in a toast. "May it always work out."

Mal's new glass arrived just as everyone finished downing theirs. He knocked his back easily and smiled at the three of them. "You guys ain't so bad. Maybe this mind crime business is just the thing we need to stay sailing in the black."

Simon returned soon after, with word that he was setting up sales across various border worlds, undercutting Alliance hospital prices. "That should freeze them out for a while and still help them fight. It'll be a long process, but the Alliance just might give concessions to the other worlds."

"Never thought I'd hear a Core doctor say so," Zoe said with a small smile. "But I suppose if you live long enough, anything's possible."

"Definitely."

Afterward, Ariadne, Eames and Arthur would all agree on one thing. As ragtag as the crew of Serenity were, they were like a family, and the ship was home. Thankfully, it was a place they could now call home as well.

 

The End


End file.
